The Supreme Court Surprises All of Us by Not Gutting the Voting Rights Act
There has been very little news about the Supreme Court worth celebrating since the Republican party hijacked what was supposed to be President Obama’s nomination slot in 2016 and then pushed through three relatively young, ultra-conservative judges during Trump’s reign of terror. But surprisingly, the nation’s highest court did something not completely screwed up last week by ruling to support Black voters and uphold a lower court’s effort to protect voting rights in Alabama.
In a five-to-four ruling, the court voted to vindicate the lower court’s decision from a three-judge panel that rejected a new map of Alabama’s congressional voting districts that was heavily unfavorable to Black voters. In fact, the proposed new districting was so gerrymandered that only one congressional district would have Black voters as the majority, even though they make up a large chunk of the state population.
Alabama’s lawmakers drew the new map following the 2020 census but were challenged when the map only left one Black majority district out of seven. And Section Two of the Voting Rights Act says that racial minorities may not “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.”
Since the conservative members of the Supreme Court have not necessarily shown themselves to be super-voting-rights-friendly in the past, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and especially Brett Kavanaugh’s decision to take the not-evil side was a pretty big surprise to everyone involved.
The ruling likely means new districting maps in both Alabama and Louisiana that could allow Democrats to pick up new seats in the House.
Attorney General Merrick Garland told the press that the ruling “preserves the principle that in the United States, all eligible voters must be able to exercise their constitutional right to vote free from discrimination based on their race.”
And Evan Milligan, a Black Alabama voter who was the lead plaintiff in the case, told the Associated Press, “We are grateful that the Supreme Court upheld what we knew to be true: that everyone deserves to have their vote matter and their voice heard. Today is a win for democracy and freedom not just in Alabama but across the United States.”
Justice Clarence Thomas, however, the court’s most conservative member and also potentially the most corrupt member, as he has been outed as having long accepted expensive gifts from at least one Republican party megadonor without disclosing them, spoke out strongly against the ruling. Basically, he said that the Voting Rights Act doesn’t require Alabama to rewrite its districting maps and wrote an angry 50-page screed stating his dissent. Luckily, enough of his colleagues disagreed with him that he’ll just have to stay mad. And that’s a win we’ll take.
(featured image: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
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